


Noble Aim

by jjwrites



Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: F/F, Soulmates
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-12-20
Updated: 2016-12-20
Packaged: 2018-09-10 14:05:26
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,564
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8920048
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jjwrites/pseuds/jjwrites
Summary: Soulmate AU set in canon universe. Tiny Kady casts a soulmate spell on herself and doesn’t expect it to keep popping up in her life as she grows up with Magic.





	

_Chances are we bruise the same; A family tree desperate for rain. A thirst only deserts know best. A hurt so at home in our chests.  
Call it stubbornness or bravery, to let our branches continue to reach, With such a noble aim, with such a noble aim as love._

**The first time Kady sees her, they’re ten.** The girl across the street is holding the hand of a taller, older blonde girl. She’s smaller than Kady expected, clutching a coffee or a hot chocolate in gloved hands and swallowed whole by the long coat she’s wearing. Kady notes that she’s never seen a coat so long on a person their age before. Her own jacket is too short in the sleeves, a little too thin for winter in New York. But she pulls it tight around her shoulders and adjusts the broken zipper so she can stand there a little longer. **  
**

A trail on the ground between them glows, a thin golden line and Kady keeps looking down at it, double and triple checking that it points to the right person. Even as the small girl in the long coat walks down the sidewalk, the golden line follows her. It’s sure, confident in the person it’s pointed Kady to.

She was probably too young to be messing with a book of love magic but winter was a long season and Kady found herself lonely a lot. Not lonely and desperate for romance -- she’s only ten and those things aren’t a priority -- but lonely enough to want to feel warmth, to miss her mom when she’s out all hours working for the hedge witches that keep them safe. Lonely enough that carrying the secret of magic leaves her without friends and a self taught knack for skills you can’t earn sports medals for. Kady always imagined a team would be nice, that the stinging, heavy pat of a proud coach across your back would fill her up. This feeling was almost the same. Watching a spell that she cast herself glow across the street of New York City had its reassurances.

The soulmates spell was the last one in the love magic book. Kady had already completed a few of the others and skipped ones that came with pictures of adult bodies. It was supposed to direct her to her soul mate. She wasn’t sure she even knew what a soul mate was or if she wanted one. Kady just liked being able to do the spellwork. She certainly hadn’t expected the golden line to point her to a girl, not one so tiny and well dressed. For a minute, she debated following just to see if the gold line would stay, and for how long. She could see where the girl went and maybe learn her name. Even if she doesn’t understand it, Kady thinks that maybe a soul mate was something someone should want. It came from a book of love spells after all and she imagined that love felt warm.

She jams her hands into her jacket pockets, trying to defrost the tips of her fingers so she can follow the sidewalk in the direction the girl is walking. But her fingers stop against the quarters in her pocket. The sun is setting and the handful of change she’d been given was to go pick up milk and a pack of microwaveable noodles. Kady runs her lip through her teeth and wraps her fingers around the coins, a cold and gentle reminder that she needs to eat, that she needs to get home and leave a light on for her mom. She searches for the girl’s blue coat again but it’s gone and the thin gold line extends beyond a building. Not bothering to mutter the words to shut the spell off, Kady turns in the other direction and ducks into the bodega on the corner. It smells like coffee she can’t afford and the owner cashes her out while she warms her fingers against the small space heater inside.

**  
**

**The second time Kady sees her, they’re eighteen**. She doesn’t mean to see her but then again, Kady’s life is a series of unintended things she’s never prepared for. No matter how much she prepares. It’s spring and despite the season, the New York air is still breezy and cool when its filled with rain, the perfect weather for her to truly practice meditating. Battle magic isn’t easy and it’s taken years of training for Kady to make progress. One of her recent challenges was finding harder and harder places to meditate and maintain focus. The cold rain in the middle of Central Park is a good start.  And it’s just like Kady to force herself into the cold.

As she sits, eyes closed, breathing in a rhythm there’s an unfamiliar warmth that creeps at her fingertips. At first she shoves it away, keeping her attention on the task at hand, at clearing her mind. But in all of her practice, she was here to push through rain and cold. She hadn’t planned to push through whatever strange warmth was dancing for attention. Kady opens one eye, resigning herself to her own curiosity to find the source of the new sensation. A thin gold line extends from where she sits, shining along the damp grass to a bench.

The girl is still wearing a long coat. It’s grey now, not blue but her heavy, loose curls are not easily mistaken. Kady’s jaw clenches and she follows the line again, just as she had as a child, eyes slowly making certain that it was pointing the right way. She’d never turned the spell off. It’s the first time Kady even thinks about that. As a kid with a world of adult problems, the possibility that this girl was significant had been meaningless. The spell was a challenge and a skill with no real purpose but to validate her own confidence. And Kady’s confidence is certainly validated now. The spell had managed to last eight whole years and the girl is here still, tied to a gold line that’s invisible to her, holding a starbucks cup, staring into it as though there’s an answer for her in the steam.

Kady shakes her head. As powerful as it is to see the line, as reassuring it is to know the spell had lasted, this isn’t what she needs. She needs to focus, to get stronger, to learn skills that have value so that she can too. After a moment of fumbling through her backpack, she pulls a plastic flask from it and takes a long sip of the contents. There’s a hope in her that the cheap alcohol will force enough false warmth into her chest to dull the sensation creeping from that gold line.

But it doesn’t. So as the girl stands to walk away, Kady searches her own memory for the words she never spoke as a kid, the closing words to end the spell. She whispers them under her breath when she finds them, watching as the girl disappears and the gold line vanishes with her this time. It takes the warm sensation from her fingers. Focusing should be what it always had been once again. Yet as Kady closes her eyes the image of the girl is burned into her memory; sad eyes, confident shoulders, rainy boots. Kady’s old enough now to know what a soul mate is and though she doesn’t truly believe in the concept, she believes in a lot of other shit that hasn’t ever panned out. She’s believed in a lot of other shit that didn’t last for eight whole years. She tells herself that it’s the magic that’s appealing, the way it can be so strong and constant and fulfilling. That’s what she’s drawn to. Not the girl. And with that thought, she takes another sip of vodka, swallows the warmth again and continues.

 

**They’re twenty-one when Kady sees her again**. This time, Kady is sure she’s drunk. It wouldn’t be the first time her eyes played tricks on her. It wouldn’t be the first time the girl dropped into her vision or her dreams. Her feet pull her across the room before her mind wants to. There’s no way this is the girl from her dreams. Her shoulders aren’t as upright and there’s a glass of dark liquor in one of her hands, a cigarette in the other. “You shouldn’t be here.” Kady blurts out, immediately regretting the words.

“What?” She stares at Kady, eyes inquisitive and offended.

“I’m sorry. I thought you were someone else.” Kady clenches her jaw to keep her thoughts still. She’s firm in her belief that her soul mate girl doesn’t belong here. This is a party on Kady’s side of town, dark and damp, cold cement floors, cups of pills and various other vices, shady people, loud music. It’s the only escape Kady finds from Marina, the hedge witch her mother recently answers to. It’s really not the kind of place anyone comes to unless they’re escaping something. The thought hurts Kady’s chest and she only then notices she’s staring at the girl’s grip on her glass.

She hears a boy call a name from across the room. _Julia_. The girl’s eyes lift and she turns away. Once again Kady finds her body moving before her brain, her hand falls to the girl’s shoulder and the name slips out of her own mouth as though she’s said it a thousand times. “Julia -- wait.”

“I thought I was someone else.” Julia’s eyes are lighter when she injects sass into her words and a dimple forms on one cheek. Kady doesn’t even realize the smile on her own face but she does notice the warmth that it comes with, that fills her chest in a way the alcohol couldn’t.

“You’re not. You’re -- “ Kady’s never felt so incapable. Not in her twenty odd years of life has she felt so ill equipped to handle something and a part of her isn’t sure she wants to handle it. There is no real reason to talk to her. She’d ended the spell years ago and this.. _Julia_ certainly didn’t know it existed.

Julia’s forehead wrinkles. She’s waiting for an answer and the curiosity on her face is charming if not irritating. Like she wants answers to a hundred other questions too. And Kady doesn’t even have an answer to just this one.

Her mind races and Kady reminds herself that she’d cast that spell for one reason and one reason only; to learn it. It was an empty skill, a tool. She hadn’t been looking for this girl. She’d been looking for other things. For ten year old Kady, learning meant that she felt good enough, accepted by a community that barely knew she was a part of it. For teenage Kady, training meant becoming capable and worthy, strong enough for whatever came. She’d wanted plenty of things but a girl was never what she had been looking for. Certainly not this girl. She isn’t even the girl Kady had been seeing in her dreams, well dressed, freckled, perfectly tossed hair, warm coffee. This girl is dark. She has haunted eyes and takes another drag of her cigarette despite the smirk on her face. Her voice is deep and Kady had watched her shrug off and discard her coat on a chair as though it were too heavy for her to carry. She’s here, escaping something, hiding from something, searching for something, doing one of the things people came to parties like this to do and the girl that Kady had seen those two times before wasn’t the girl who did that.

“You’re not who I expected.” Kady finally finishes, the words suddenly bitter in her mouth.

“I didn’t realize you had expectations.” The playfulness in Julia’s expression falls away quickly. “But if you expected me to be good at living up to them, you were already asking too much.” She sips her drink again, a long sip and finishes the glass. The boy across the room calls her name again and Julia waves him off before directing her attention back to Kady.

There’s something like fire in that stare and Kady becomes overwhelmingly aware of how much warmth is too much. It’s burning a hole in her and her chest aches. Julia’s eyes are angry and sad all at once, the brown in them darkening and Kady doesn’t know why she’s still standing there. Why does she care if Kady’s disappointed? Does it matter to this girl that a stranger found her existence anticlimactic? And Kady isn’t even sure why she cares herself, why she feels drawn to correct Julia, why she wants to tell her she isn’t disappointed. It was a spell. As sure as she is that this girl may be real, everything Kady knew about her before now was the result of a spell, an empty skill, a test of her own competence.

But the girl is still looking at her waiting for answers. Kady finds it jarring how easily Julia knows there are more answers to wait for.

“You’re my soul mate.” Kady suddenly realizes it won’t hurt to say the words. It doesn’t mean anything. So she simply says them, with all the carelessness she’s used to and a simple shrug.

Julia’s expression doesn’t change but she drags her cigarette again, still waiting.

“I’m a witch. When I was a kid, I cast a soul mate spell. I just wanted to know if I could do it. It lead me to you.”

“You’re a _what_?” Julia spits the words back at her, a tired laugh behind them. It’s as though she’s heard this all before. It hurts more than Kady expected. Every part of this is different from the things she had spent her life preparing for. And she watches the need for answers fall off Julia’s face. She watches how quickly she doesn’t care about Kady’s expectations anymore. “I don’t have time for fantasy bullshit. I’m sure you can find something else to snort here that will meet whatever expectations you had.”

Kady’s mouth falls open and Julia tips her empty drink glass at her, finally moving across the room to whoever the boy was that had been calling her. The fire that overwhelmed her just a second ago falls away. It’s unspeakably fast and the cold she’s left standing in is more brutal than ever. It’s not a real, palpable cold but one that sits in her chest and occupies a place meant for warmth. She’s ten years old again, standing on a sidewalk. The girl’s coat isn’t quite as bright blue. Up closer, she’s shivering despite her gloves and her cocoa. The blonde woman holding her hand as a lecture on her lips.

Kady can’t look at it. She shakes her head and turns to leave the party but stops at the door. Before she can talk herself out of it, she mutters the spell again, eyes closed, fingers moving with practiced detail. This isn’t the same girl she’d found when she was ten and she’s sure if she does it again, things will have changed. Kady opens her eyes, determined to find that it’s different now, but just as certain as before, a thin gold line paints the air between her and Julia.

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first time ever writing fic so please feel free to leave feedback if you can. Will only be a two-parter, most likely but I should be writing other, multi chapter stuff soon.


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